Move over, Ebola virus. There's a new epidemic on the global blockan airborne filovirus just as deadly and a hundred times more contagious. Ground zero is near the village of Muaratebo in Sumatra, an embarkation point for shipments of primates to research laboratories in the US. A dozen macaques dispatched from Muaratebo arrive in Delaware showing signs of a ferociously debilitating virus that attacks their lungs, moves on to other organs, and causes inescapable death within nine days in the macaques and also in any humans unlucky enough to come into close contact with them. Back in Sumatra, Holly Becker arrives for a visit to her 12-year-old twins, Emma and Lucywho've been staying with her ex-husband, medical botanist Jonathan Rhodesto find a nightmarish scenario: There's no word from Jonathan, no trace of him or the girls, and no way to get past the military roadblocks to the Rhodes enclave at Rafflesia Camp in the interior. Back stateside, Lt. Col. Carmen Travis, head pathologist at the US Army's Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, traces the outbreak of the epidemic to Muaratebo; but even as her task force packs for Sumatra, a British entomologist brings the Muaratebo virus to London, and a colleague of Travis's finds a link between the outbreak and a hush-hush genetic research project that went catastrophically awry in the New Mexico desert ten years before. If you're wondering how the infection traveled from New Mexico to Sumatra, and how Travis's team can overcome the conspiracy of silence to reunite frantic Holly Becker with her daughterswell, the answers to these questions turn out to be scarier than you can imagine. Lynch's debut spreads its excitement so breathlessly over so many time zones that it reads like a screenplay just waiting for the actors to breathe life into its forgettable cast. It would make a terrific movie for audiences who weren't satisfiedor scared offby Outbreak. (First printing of 100,000)
Pub Date: Aug. 11, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-44842-X
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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